Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band has finally been certified platinum, almost half a century late. Following a change to the way the British Phonographic Industry association awards sales certificates, 13 Beatles albums will finally receive awards for which they have long been eligible.

Since 1973, the BPI has awarded silver, gold and platinum sales certificates to albums that sell 60,000, 100,000 and 300,000 copies respectively in the UK. Despite these long-established rules, the BPI only distributed official notices to record labels that requested the awards; otherwise, blockbuster sellers wallowed in officially unmetallic obscurity.

That changed last month. Now, whether or not a label requests a certificate, albums that reach those sales thresholds will automatically receive their awards. Accordingly, the Beatles – in addition to acts such as Bob Dylan and Marvin Gaye, whose classic albums have continued to sell in large quantities – have received a slew of overdue sales certificates.

Still, the Beatles won't receive everything they deserve. Although the BPI began giving out sales certificates in 1974, four years after the Fab Four split, these new awards are only being given out based on receipts since 1994. A record like Sgt Pepper's, which has sold roughly 5.1m UK copies overall, will not receive its proper designation of 17x platinum: instead, the LP is officially triple-platinum, based on 900,000 copies moved since 1994.

Clearly, despite these chart technicalities, nobody needs to shed a tear for the Beatles' commercial difficulties. Besides, Paul McCartney will get another run at the BPI's sales mile-markers later this year, when he releases an album called New.